First nationwide polio door-to-door campaign begins tomorrow

Islamabad: Pakistan starts its final push towards polio interruption, with the first nationwide door-to-door polio campaign of 2017-18 low transmission season starting tomorrow (from September 18 to 22). Similar nationwide campaigns have been scheduled in November and December of this year, and February and May 2018 as well.

The campaign will target a total of 37.74 million under five children years of age (18.76 million in Punjab, 8.6 million in Sindh, 5.6 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2.4 million in Balochistan, 1.034 million in FATA, 0.74 million in AJK, 0.234 million in Gilgit-Baltistan and 0.312 million children in Islamabad) by utilizing around 42 million doses of bOPV.

In the core reservoir areas covered through Community Based Vaccination (CBV) approach, it will be a five-day campaign with two days of catch-up, while in the mobile team areas, there will be a three-day campaign and a one to two-day catch-up.

A total of 250,000 personnel will strive to achieve set targets across Pakistan; these include 23,250 area in-charges, 7,896 Union Council medical officers, as well as 182,787 mobile, 10,122 fixed and 11,220 transit team members.

The campaign will be held in Quetta from September 17 to 23, in Lahore from September 19-23, and in Karachi from September 16 to 22.